A Less-American Way of War?

We have written about how the war against Libya was waged differently than such multilateral campaigns of the past. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen even toldBattleland that the “balance shift[ed] a bit” in the Libyan campaign. “We have been used to the fact that the U.S. should be in the very front line, and absolutely be in the lead, to carry out NATO operations,” he said. “How could it be that the U.S. should always take the lion’s share of the burden — couldn’t European allies step up to the plate?”

Of course, war-weariness among Americans — and the fact that NATO is squarely in Europe’s back yard, so why shouldn’t they do the heavy lifting required? — also played a role. Nice to see the New York Times asking the same kind of questions Monday morning.